What role are mobile learning apps playing in the ed-tech revolution

Published: November 23, 2015 12:02:34 AM

E-education is commonplace now. A new trend we notice is edutainment, where companies have started blending education with entertainment to ensure that the process of learning doesn’t become boring after a point of time

Savita lives in a small town in Rajasthan and attends a government-run school in her district. She is a student of grade 7. Her elder brother, who goes to the same school, is now a student of grade 12 and is in the process of making some very important career decisions.

With the advent of digital learning platforms, and various educational apps, the lives of these two children have drastically changed. Various leading ed-tech start-ups have spearheaded a noteworthy revolution of sorts in the online and mobile learning space. Savita now has the benefit of complementing her school education with various educational opportunities available on her computer and on her phone as well in the form of apps. She catches up on school curriculum and the topics that she misses by spending some time on such apps every day. Her brother, on the other hand, who has to prepare for various competitive exams, accesses the content made available online by leading coaching institutes.

E-education is a commonplace notion. A new trend that we notice in this space is that of edutainment, where companies have started blending education with entertaining environment to ensure that the process of learning doesn’t become boring after a point of time. In fact, we at ConveGenius recently launched Battle of Minds, a social edutainment network, which is aimed towards doing exactly this by ‘appifying’ the paradigms of learning and making it fun and rewarding, all at the same time.

The benefits of such app-based, edutainment-driven learning are numerous. Adaptive content, topic-wise recommendations, pace modulation, subject subscription, assignment frequency, virtual mentorship, personalisation aided by gamification and actionable feedback have all been made possible in apps due to advancements in machine learning and app development technologies. These apps act like a personal tutor, accessible anytime and anywhere. I must add that Battle of Minds goes a level deeper and allows users to engage with similar people to understand their social rankings and even seek help from them as and when required. The edutainment side of their story motivates users to work harder every time.

Numbers shows that smartphones are likely to reach households before good infrastructure can, and thus, such apps are likely to generate impact faster than anything else we can imagine right now. App-based education is, therefore, an important development of our generation, and will allow people like Savita and her brother with scanty resources to learn better and smarter.